What's Your Type?

 So I have a confession to make: I haven't really made any crosswords in the last 3 months or so. It turns out that the combination of moving to a brand new city, starting a brand new job, and trying to find hobbies that will actually let me meet people pretty much leaves me with no time or creative energy, so you probably won't see my byline many places in the near future. I hope to be back at it at some point in the nebulous future, but until life settles a bit, I'm on a bit of a construction break.

(That said, if you like seeing my byline on things, I have one of my Puzzmo puzzles from this past summer running in an actual physical book! How cool is that!)

Anyways, what I always have is puzzles I made a bit ago and never clued. Today's puzzle is a midi I made over the summer. I was on a road trip when I came up with this theme. I thought of the first two themers almost instantly and then went through every other possible combination (with my friend in the driver's seat listening to all of them). This did not result in many possible themers (which means this is a tight theme set!), but it did result in a lot of things that sounded like drug names or obscure music genres.

This was test solved by Amy, who is an expert on the theme of this puzzle. Go do my Chicago-themed collab with her if you haven't done it yet!

Puz | Crosshare

Training Montage (with Amy Giacomucci)

Hello, friends! It's been a bit since I've posted a puzzle here (or... anywhere else), because in the past two months, I have both moved to Boston and started a new job, which has left me with very little crossword time. But even when I am not doing crossword stuff, the rest of the world is. In particular, the Midwest Crossword Tournament is happening this weekend in the beautiful city of Chicago, a city that is near and dear to my heart. I won't be there in person on account of not living in Chicago and having a busy job, but I will be playing along online, and I believe sign ups are still open for the online tournament.

In honor of the tournament, I figured this would be a good time to release a Chicago-themed puzzle. And to make this more legitimate, I enlisted the help of my friend and current Chicago resident Amy! We started with a pretty straightforward theme, but as is the way when Amy and I make a blog puzzle, we got a little silly with it, especially on the cluing end. I've tried to check everything for standard crossword grammar stuff, but this puzzle is very much a "no test solvers, we die like men" situation, so please let me know if you spot any obvious typos or such.

Amy would like to add that she really liked when I rejected a clue of hers (that will NOT be appearing in this puzzle) because the wording "felt bad on a visceral level" and that she's actually only middle of the road when it comes to spice tolerance.

Puz and Crosshare are linked below, but as a heads up, there is one clue with an emoji that is broken in the puz file. The clue (and puzzle) should still be completely solvable with the emoji missing, but the puzzle will lose some (or, in this case, exactly one) character.

Puz | Crosshare